I just real­ized that I’ve made a ton of posts about col­lege, and yet peo­ple don’t quite under­stand the exact liv­ing con­di­tions that I am in. Of course, this isn’t really TOO impor­tant con­sid­er­ing that all of my posts thus far have been rather arbi­trary and more on the philo­soph­i­cal side of things. Still, I think it’s impor­tant, if not inter­est­ing for peo­ple to see how dorm life is at CSULB. I am cur­rently liv­ing in the Park­side Dorms at CSULB. These dorms are suite style which means that they feel kind of like a hotel though they are admit­tedly noth­ing like what most peo­ple would imag­ine a hotel to be like. My room is fur­nished with two beds, two desks, two dressers, and two clos­ets, and absolutely noth­ing else. So no, I don’t have a bath­room in my room, it doesn’t come with a T.V. all it has is some very basic fur­nish­ings. With that being said these basic fur­nish­ings are really all that I need, and the school has pro­vided me with more than enough stor­age space. I brought a ton of stuff with me to CSULB, and yet I think I’m only using about a quar­ter of my avail­able stor­age space. There’s lit­er­ally draw­ers, and places for me to store my stuff every­where so I wouldn’t exactly say that these dorms feel cramped or constricting.

Now what makes a suite dif­fer­ent, in com­par­i­son to a reg­u­lar dorm (at CSULB at least) is the fact that each suite has one door, which leads to four other doors, which each lead to the indi­vid­ual rooms that every­body is in. No, we don’t have “a com­mon” area in the mid­dle of the suite, all we have is a hall­way and four doors. We share a bath­room which has two stalls and two show­ers with the suite next to us. So essen­tially about 16 peo­ple are shar­ing the bath­room. While I am sure these liv­ing “accom­mo­da­tions”  sound pretty sparse and unex­cit­ing for most peo­ple, they actu­ally aren’t too bad. The cool thing about liv­ing in a suite is the fact that you get to know the peo­ple in the three other rooms really well, and you begin to develop a kind of cama­raderie with them. Plus the lack of accom­mo­da­tions like a T.V., “com­mon” room, etc make it really easy to either focus on school, or to actu­ally social­ize with peo­ple. So it’s really far more advan­ta­geous than most peo­ple think.

A lot of peo­ple have con­cerns about show­er­ing and using the bath­room, but I must say that it really isn’t too bad. Even though our bath­room serves about 16 peo­ple, I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than one per­son in at a time. While show­er­ing isn’t exactly as enjoy­able as it is at home, the water is hot and the faucets do work so show­er­ing isn’t too bad. But I will admit that it does suck hav­ing to go to the shower with san­dals on in order to pre­vent some nasty skin dis­ease from spreading.

With that being said, there’s one par­tic­u­lar down­side to liv­ing in my dorm and that is the fact that I have to walk really far to get any­where. The Park­side dorms are the fur­thest dorms away from cam­pus, and my par­tic­u­lar build­ing is the fur­thest Park­side build­ing from cam­pus. What this means is that I basi­cally have a one mile trek to class, and back from class each day which is pretty time con­sum­ing. Now I don’t nec­es­sar­ily mind walk­ing, after all I am an ath­lete and I do things that are a lot more dif­fi­cult than walk. But my building’s dis­tance is really quite a has­sle when it comes to things like going to the gym. The gym is lit­er­ally on the other side of cam­pus which means that I have to make about a 20–25 minute walk to it. Essen­tially, I’m get­ting a work­out before I start my work­out which I guess is a good thing, but I don’t nec­es­sar­ily con­sider walk­ing a work­out. The real bum­mer comes with walk­ing back from my work­out though because I’m usu­ally pretty tired after my exercise.

Here’s some pic­tures of my room.

Stay tuned for my next post about dorm life tomor­row which will be talk­ing about dorm food, the cam­pus itself, and a plethora of other things.

Today was my first “offi­cial” day at work. Now I put offi­cial in paren­the­sis because I’ve actu­ally been work­ing for this com­pany for almost my whole life, but this is the first time that I will be employed by them on a con­sis­tent basis. Of course the com­pany that I am refer­ring to is my parent’s pro­duc­tion com­pany “McNally Enter­prises Incor­po­rated” or MEI for short. When mak­ing the deci­sion to go off to col­lege, a big com­po­nent of my deci­sion was the abil­ity to work. Now I am one of the few peo­ple in life who actu­ally enjoy work­ing. For me, work offers a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties. First, work makes me feel like I am mak­ing progress on some­thing. Whether it is exer­cis­ing (which means mak­ing progress as a more fit ath­lete) or play­ing piano (which means mak­ing progress on becom­ing a more ver­sa­tile and adept musi­cian) when­ever I work, I feel like I am doing some­thing good. This in turn incites a plethora of pos­i­tive emo­tions within me, and gives me a feel­ing of accom­plish­ment at the end of the day. Out­side of that, work also gives me a chance to escape from a lot of the real­i­ties in life. Gen­er­ally when I work, I get to focus all of my thoughts on accom­plish­ing one spe­cific task as quickly, and as skill­fully as pos­si­ble, which is a nice change of pace in com­par­i­son to all of the thoughts and issues that I usu­ally expe­ri­ence dur­ing the course of the day. On top of that, there’s also the feel­ing of supe­ri­or­ity that I expe­ri­ence when I work. I’ve real­ized that a lot of peo­ple are incred­i­bly lazy, espe­cially at the col­le­giate and high school level. By being a hard worker, I can’t help but feel as if I am some­how bet­ter than other peo­ple, not in the sense that I am supe­rior in com­par­i­son to them, but more so in the sense that I am capa­ble of han­dling cer­tain chal­lenges and cir­cum­stances that some peo­ple just aren’t  capa­ble of han­dling because they’ve never had to. Finally, there’s always the added bonus of mak­ing money, which is hon­estly the low­est pri­or­ity for me when I start work­ing. To me, I feel that in order to be a good worker, one should be doing some­thing that they enjoy so much, that they would gladly do it for free. Oth­er­wise, the per­son who works solely because a job pays well, ends up work­ing under one fun­da­men­tally flawed prin­ci­pal, which is greed.

My philo­soph­i­cal tan­gent aside work was actu­ally really fun today. Fun is a word that is very hard to con­nect with my parent’s com­pany. Our line of work is very chal­leng­ing in the sense that it is both paper­work inten­sive, but also phys­i­cal labor inten­sive, and if that isn’t bad enough, the hours are long, spo­radic, and some­times incon­ve­nient. For instance, when I’ve worked for my par­ents in the past, it’s usu­ally been for shows that I had to wake up at 4 in the morn­ing to get to, or for shows that started being bro­ken down at mid­night, which meant that I basi­cally had to pull all nighters. While I wouldn’t say I hated this kind of work, it was def­i­nitely very dif­fi­cult, and because I was employed so incon­sis­tently, I never really learned any­thing or pro­gressed at the job.

Today was much dif­fer­ent though. I began a kind of appren­tice­ship with our company’s leg­endary car­pen­ter Javier, and with that I started to learn the intri­ca­cies of stage con­struc­tion. My task for today was to help put the fin­ish­ing touches on some walls. I had to pound down any erro­neous sta­ples or nails with a ham­mer, then I had to sand down some of the ridges on the walls, that were tough due the wood being cut. After that I had Javi’s brother spray paint the back of the walls black, while I spray painted our MEI logo sten­cil. To be hon­est, this was the first day that I actu­ally enjoyed work­ing for my parent’s com­pany. I learned a great deal of things, I didn’t have to work ridicu­lous hours, and I also think I am enjoy­ing it more because I have cho­sen to work.

See, a big goal of mine in col­lege is to become self depen­dent. I hon­estly can’t stand the thought of hav­ing my par­ents pay for my tuition, car, hous­ing, food, etc, even though I am not cur­rently liv­ing with them. Right now, I see col­lege as my chance to grow up and become an adult, and with that adult­hood comes fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity. So the fact that I am not only work­ing (which once again I love inher­ently because it is work), but that I am also becom­ing fis­cally inde­pen­dent in the process is just an awe­some thought for me.

Tak­ing a quick turn in direc­tions, like my com­rade Alex Guichet, I’ve also had para­noia about my stuff at col­lege being harmed. No, I’m not wor­ry­ing about any­one “hack­ing” my com­puter because my com­puter is a Mac, and as we all know, Macs can’t get hacked (/sarcasm). I’m actu­ally more so wor­ried about my com­puter get­ting stolen, which would suck because Macs are so damn expen­sive and I hon­estly can’t afford to replace this thing. Thus I have cre­ated this anti-theft device for my computer. 

As you can see, once the would-be-thief sees that this com­puter needs repairs (which would in turn cost them money, which is some­thing that they don’t have see­ing as how they are attempt­ing to steal from me) they will instantly choose some­body else’s com­puter which is in per­fectly good work­ing con­di­tion. Even if the thief does steal my com­puter, I have my ini­tials engraved with per­ma­nent marker on the bot­tom of it so that way I can always tell that it is mine. Fool proof isn’t it?

I’m mak­ing this post rather late into the evening. Of course for me, late in the evening is any­thing past 10 O’clock and right now it’s 9:45. So this means that this post will be rather brief. Any­ways, some­thing remark­able hap­pened to me in the sense that this was the first day that I truly felt com­fort­able at col­lege. So far my col­lege expe­ri­ence has been great, but in com­par­i­son to high school, the free­dom and respon­si­bil­ity brings a dif­fer­ent spec­trum of emo­tions into play. At first there’s the feel­ing of change, as if every­thing is dif­fer­ent (par­don the redun­dancy). This is a very hard feel­ing to explain, but it’s a sort of sub­tle uneasi­ness that one feels when they are exposed to new things. Then comes free­dom, which is the real­iza­tion that one can do what­ever they want and that they are com­pletely respon­si­ble for the con­se­quences of their actions. I’m sure free­dom sounds pretty self explana­tory, but when one is out on their own in col­lege and with­out an imme­di­ate par­ent safety net, the full real­iza­tion of free­dom is really experienced.

Then comes fear and lone­li­ness. While this may seem and sound cyn­i­cal it’s a nat­ural part of the expe­ri­ence. It’s the real­iza­tion that one is com­pletely on their own, with­out their friends, with­out peo­ple directly car­ing for them, and this causes sad­ness. Yes­ter­day I was in the fear and lone­li­ness stage of my col­lege expe­ri­ence sim­ply because I wanted to be with my friends, I wanted to know how my fam­ily was doing, and I was in des­per­ate need of see­ing my lass. I wouldn’t so much call it home­sick­ness, but more so dis­ap­point­ment that all of these peo­ple couldn’t expe­ri­ence col­lege with me.   I felt pretty bummed for a good por­tion of the day, and then some­thing clicked and I sim­ply found my stride.

I was able to start talk­ing about the things that I love. Rep­re­sent what I stand for and be who I strive to be as an indi­vid­ual. I guess it could best be described like this. When one goes to col­lege they are exposed to a vari­ety of peo­ple, ideas, and oppor­tu­ni­ties, and with all of these new things, the indi­vid­ual self gets drowned out. How­ever, what hap­pened to me today was that I redis­cov­ered myself. I found the me who is com­fort­able, kind, and dri­ven. Not the me who is pla­cated by the sub­tleties of change or lost in the free­dom that col­lege offers. Per­haps most impor­tantly, I over­came the fear and lone­li­ness of being off by myself. I’m sure this is all very abstract and had I pos­sessed more time I’m sure I would have eas­ily been able to orga­nize this in a more coher­ent man­ner. How­ever, because I don’t have such a lux­ury, I guess we will just have to set­tle for my stream of conscious.

Today is my first day of col­lege classes and while most peo­ple going into col­lege are fear­ful of its dif­fi­culty, I have to be hon­est in say­ing that it really isn’t too bad. Of course, I’ve only had one class so far, and that was only for 50 min­utes, and at that we spent the whole time going over the syl­labus, but just off of first impres­sions the dif­fi­culty of col­lege is way over­rated. I think a large part of this stems from the fact that col­lege involves learn­ing on one’s own. Instead of going to school for about 7 hours a day plus 3 hours of extra cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties after­words, I only have to spend about 2–4 hours in class each day leav­ing me with a ton of time to do what­ever I want. Now the rea­son for the rel­a­tive brevity of class time is because most col­leges expect the stu­dents to read and research things on their own, which I am sure takes a fair amount of time, but it def­i­nitely beats hav­ing to go to school for almost 10 hours each day, then hav­ing to come home and do point­less home­work. The real beauty comes in fig­ur­ing out how to split up time. With so much flex­i­bil­ity avail­able, its really easy to tai­lor your learn­ing curve, sched­ule, etc to your own needs.

For instance, I only have two classes on Mon­days and Wednes­days and both of them have a very large time gap between them. If I wanted to I could go work for my par­ents for a few hours in between, go study, update my blog (which is what I am doing cur­rently) or sim­ply hang out. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less and the free­dom is hon­estly a very unique and inspir­ing thing. I think the biggest mis­con­cep­tion that peo­ple have about col­lege is the fact that they can only view it from the per­spec­tive of being a high­schooler which means very rigid sched­ules, and lots of extracur­ric­u­lar oblig­a­tions to under­take because they aren’t respon­si­ble for much more than bol­ster­ing the col­lege resume. In actual col­lege there’s a lot of self dis­ci­pline involved because lit­er­ally no one is going to care enough to tell you to come to class, to wake you up in time, to make sure you get your books, it’s all about tak­ing care of things on your own. While this total free­dom may sound like a scary prospect, it really works out well because the per­son inher­ently finds ways to be respon­si­ble for them­selves because the mind starts rely­ing on the body’s nat­ural instincts for self preservation.

Even I’m notic­ing that I’m find­ing a lot of inde­pen­dence and con­fi­dence in myself that I had pre­vi­ously lacked in high school. I’m con­stantly check­ing for my wal­let, my cell phone, always aware of the time, con­stantly plan­ning what my next activ­ity is going to be. I guess it could be said that I am more con­scious and aware of my sur­round­ings but I have to be or else I would make a mis­take which could cost me, and I won’t have the safety net of my par­ents to bust me out of any trou­ble that I am in. I’m sure this all sounds very pes­simistic but I mean this words in a very pos­i­tive light, there’s a true beauty to the inde­pen­dence that col­lege brings, and it cer­tainly helps in devel­op­ing a more well rounded individual.

With classes comes books, and let me be the first to say that acquir­ing books in col­lege is a big headache. First off, some of the pro­fes­sors don’t let you know which books you need until you get to your first class, so there’s no real way to get your books before­hand. Once the books that you do need are finally revealed, the book store is absolutely packed with peo­ple try­ing to pur­chase their own books, and thus there is a huge 45 minute line at all times. To add to that, because the store is so packed, it’s very dif­fi­cult to find books in the first place, and even then there’s so many other book buy­ing options that it isn’t even 100% guar­an­teed that one is get­ting the best deal on a book. My goal for today is to fig­ure out which books I need for all of my classes and to pur­chase them because I have a lot of read­ing to do. How­ever, no mat­ter what I do, chances are that it will take a lot of time because I will either be research­ing the best deal online or fight­ing to get them at the bookstore.

One aspect of col­lege that is really a dou­ble edged sword is the fact that we are adver­tised for every­thing. Already there’s a ton of banks, groups, and orga­ni­za­tions on cam­pus try­ing to depart us from our money and to be hon­est it’s a lit­tle unnerv­ing. For instance, I was wait­ing in line to check out the book store and these Chase credit card peo­ple started solic­it­ing us to start bank accounts with them. While I didn’t mind the offer, these par­tic­u­lar peo­ple did it in a taste­less fash­ion. They asked me if I had a bank account, I said “Yeah, at Bank of Amer­ica” and then they started to bad mouth Bank of Amer­ica. First off, I only need a bank to do one thing for me and that is to store my money. Bank of Amer­ica ful­fills that pur­pose very well and thus there’s no rea­son for me to change. Sec­ond, insult­ing a person’s bank is in essence insult­ing the per­son. If some­one really likes Dr. Pep­per, going around bad mouthing Dr. Pep­per is essen­tially bad mouthing them because their choice and taste for Dr. Pep­per is a part of who they are.

How­ever, I will admit that it is kind of cool being adver­tised for things, and it does have its perks. For instance, free movies are con­stantly showed for test­ing, and a lot of com­pa­nies give out free stuff. On my first day in the dorm they gave me a com­pli­men­tary can of Mon­ster, which would be cool if I was into energy drinks but sadly it is sim­ply sit­ting in my food stor­age area left to be for­ever untouched. It’s very inter­est­ing see­ing how aggres­sively com­pa­nies tar­get us col­lege kids though. I think it’s because we epit­o­mize the future, rep­re­sent a broad range of inter­ests, eth­nic­i­ties, and ages, which makes it flat­ter­ing, yet kind of scary when one real­izes that it’s all an elab­o­rate scheme to sep­a­rate us from our pre­cious money.